Tourniquet

Renegade City. Futurist Gothika. Mecca of the damned. Where uber rock-band, Origin, is deified and the world's dark sub-cultures coexist under the umbrella faith of 'Belief'.
But Roses, the great, Gothic messiah is dead, the tribes are in turmoil, and Renegade's own home-bred rebels, the Drifters, are quickly becoming a law unto themselves.
The last thing...

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Queen Rat

In the submersible world of the Free Ocean 14-year-old Princess Ratiana Clementine Saint John of the submersible Victoriana is to be wed to Prince Simeon of the Aesthetes. Not only have they never met before but to add insult to injury they must fulfil several life-threatening Grand Rites before the knot can be tied....

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Cyber Circus

Hellequin, last of the HawkEye military elite, is desperate to escape the legacy of Soul Food, the miraculous plant food that leeched the soil, destroyed his family, and instigated a bloody civil war. For a man awaiting the inevitable madness brought on by his enforced biomorph implant, there's only one choice. Run away with...

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Autodrome

With its population of teen motor sport enthusiasts, promoters, grease monkeys and drivers, life in the steam and gas powered metropolis of Autodrome is all about the race.
On the same day that 15 year old Zar Punkstar qualifies as a Pro Leaguer, he finds his inventor father murdered, and a clue - a Paranascope...

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The Next Big Thing - Round Robin

What is the working title of your next book?
Curtain Falls
Where did the idea come from for the book?
I’ve always been fascinated by the notion of ‘otherness’, and have explored this in both of my previous novels, Tourniquet and Cyber Circus. In Curtain Falls, I have shifted focus to the human psyche, in particular the...

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Gunpowder, reason and plot

The nights are drawing in, there are plenty of leaves to swish through when taking Drake the big fat lab out for a walk, and those beautiful golden days of the summer are but a memory. This time of year has always been special to me because it reminds me of my husband Del...

Books

Writing, Fear and the Other

What scares you? What creeps beneath your skin? Makes you check back over your shoulder every few steps? Keeps you awake at night, watching the shadows for signs of movement?

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Blood Ties

Do you ever find yourself fighting against the tide of self-doubt? I'm pretty sure its something most writers suffer now and again – even those who seem eternally buoyant with the combined self-marketing prowess of Walt Disney, Katie Price and Jedward. In the current publishing climate, it's not enough to write well. It's also...

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New beginnings, notebooks and learning to share nicely

So, yes, I have failed dismally to keep my blog updated over the past year. There have been a few reasons for this, but still no excuse bar the fact that I am more of a listener than a sharer. Still, it's a habit I'm trying to break, so here goes ;-)

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Priest

Okay, so it's hardly news that I'm a sucker for post-apocalyptic genre fodder. After the so-so Legion, the latest movie from the grim-and-bare-it combination of actor Paul Bettany and director Scott Stewart is Priest. The movie is set in a grim gothika of a future where humans have been plagued for centuries by...

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News

THINGS THAT I DO AND DON'T WRITE

I was recently contacted by science fiction author, editor, web publisher, anthologist, and all round good guy Keith Brooke, who asked me to take part in a blog round robin on the subject of ‘Three Things I Don’t Write (and Three Things I do).’ Keith also tagged the most excellent Stephen Palmer and...

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The Next Big Thing - Round Robin

What is the working title of your next book?
Curtain Falls
Where did the idea come from for the book?
I’ve always been fascinated by the notion of ‘otherness’, and have explored this in both of my previous novels, Tourniquet and Cyber Circus. In Curtain Falls, I have shifted focus to the human psyche, in particular the...

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The Apocalypse and beyond

Last weekend Del and I held our post apocalyptic party, which centered on our wedding vow renewal ceremony. Our very dear friend, Sam Moffat, acted as officiant and organised the most incredible ceremony. Sam had secretly contacted a number of our closest writer friends and asked them to give a short reading on the...

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Mind, Body and Soul

It’s hard to believe the mind is such a powerful thing. I don’t mean that in some self-congratulatory, “I am Girl Genius” kind of way. No, I’m talking about the phenomenal power of the sub-conscious over every aspect of our lives. Up until three years ago I could never have believed the mind was...

Blood Ties

Do you ever find yourself fighting against the tide of self-doubt? I’m pretty sure its something most writers suffer now and again – even those who seem eternally buoyant with the combined self-marketing prowess of Walt Disney, Katie Price and Jedward. In the current publishing climate, it’s not enough to write well. It’s also essential to believe in yourself with evangelical conviction. I am forever locked in a mental battle between wanting to embrace the delightfully pretentious single-mindedness of the tortured aka penniless artist, and needing to press on with maniacal commercial drive and ‘just earn, goddamn you!’ It can be exhausting – all this ego, all this self-belief – and so easy to lose yourself.

Then something comes along which acts as a metaphorical hand to pick you up and brush you down and set you on your way again. This can come in the form of some sound advice, a blowout with friends, or a reminder of why you wanted to write stories in the first place.

For me, the reminder came recently in the form of a beautiful tattoo design created for me by the artist Su Haddrell*. Su had very kindly agreed to piece together my random thoughts about the kind of image I wanted – a scarlet fairy to reflect my love of fae imagery and stories since very young (an obsession now carried on by my daughter ‘Scarlet’), art deco styling and incorporating 1920s’ flapper fashion. These latter two elements were in homage to a period I love stylistically and also to my nana, Doreen Roberts. A ballerina who travelled throughout Europe with a troupe in the twenties, Doreen instilled in me a love of theatre and all kinds of artistic expression. As a child I was enthralled by her tales – of watching fairies in the woods with her grandfather. Of dancing The Firebird and accidentally stepping onto the burning coals that edged a trapdoor. Of doing loop-the-loops in a two man biplane on her 21st birthday. Of hiding under a stationary train with her three young children in a bid to escape Nazi machine gun fire, and of making their escape from Paris to Calais on foot. Of violinist boyfriends and costumes and ballet shoes and panstick and curtains down. So many wonderful stories. So much fodder for a young girl’s imagination.

I look at my own stories now about gothic fantasies, rock star gods, flying circuses, puppeteers, and time travelling Vaudeville theatres and see so much influence. Last week, seeing Su’s tattoo design for the first time, I was reminded that often we are peeling back the layers of ourselves when we write. Here is a scrap from a great aunt, here a stitch from a lost mother, here the eccentricities of a grandfather.

Acknowledging the debt that I owe to my grandmother does not stem the self-doubt, but it does remind me that I am proud of the weird tapestry of stories that have evolved from her influence. And that helps me to believe in the weird tapestry of me and continue putting pen to paper.

I love this entry! Those stories your nana told would make amazing novels of their own some day, and I love hearing about how they’ve inspired your work. And what a beautiful image to wear on your skin!

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This header showcases a few main aspects of our bar styling options—but certainly not all!

First, we have a transparent, "absolute" bar overhanging everything. That bar is the one that houses this off canvas area.

Next, we have our "full-height" bar that is actually using a little bit of CSS magic to offset the height of the bar below it (notice how that bar is always positioned at the bottom of the screen). Additionally, notice how the text and buttons inside this bar respond to the sizing of the viewport all without the need for JavaScript.

Then, we have our last visible bar that houses our logo and navigation. This bar becomes sticky as you scroll down the screen, and also shrinks to a specified ratio of its original size. Notice how the links maintain their positioning and the logo scales automatically. Also, we've turned on our "content scrolling" for this bar, allowing its contents to be scrolled horizontally on smaller screens, a pattern we're seeing much more of on mobile devices these days.

Finally, as you scroll further down the page, you'll notice a final sticky bar slide in...from out of nowhere! This utilizes our "initially hidden" option, which allows you to bring in content further down a page as needed, perfect for the calls to action in our example.

This is only a sliver of what is possible with our new bar styling options available in our header builder. We've abstracted out a core set of useful features to achieve complex navigation layouts, and then our styling and JavaScript takes care of the rest intelligently. We look forward to seeing what you create with these new tools!